Oral History Interview
DSIT AE 007

Interview Conducted 31 February 1991 on Board the U.S.S. Nicholas, Mina Sulman, Manama, Bahrain

Interviewer: MAJ Robert K. Wright, Jr.

MAJ WRIGHT: [This is an] Operation DESERT STORM interview being conducted on 12 February, 1991, aboard the U.S.S. Nicholas, FFG-47, berthed at Bahrain--Manama, Bahrain. And the interviewing official is MAJ Robert K. Wright, Jr., the XVIII Airborne Corps Historian.

Sir, if I could get you to give me your name, rank and serial number?

CDR MORRAL: CDR Dennis Gilbert Morral. I am a Commander in the United States Navy; ***-**-****.

MAJ WRIGHT: And, sir, your current duty position?

CDR MORRAL: I am Commanding Officer of Guided Missile Frigate U.S.S. Nicholas, FFG-47.

MAJ WRIGHT: Sir, if I could get you to give me a little bit of background on the way that the Navy employs the 4th Squadron, 17th Cavalry, here in the Arabian Gulf?

CDR MORRAL: Well, the helicopters, of course, unless it's an unusual circumstance, are only flown at nighttime due to the relative slow speeds and vulnerability of the OH-58D [i.e. AH-58D Kiowa Warrior, formerly known as the AHIP]. We normally would only use them at nighttime. They are, in fact, the ship's eyes at night time.

We launch them along with our LAMPS SH-60 Navy helicopters, which act more or less as a controlling helicopter platform that then directs and vectors the AHIPs into certain areas to conduct surveillance. They use all their mast-mounted sights for night time vision, therefore they can see things at nighttime as well as we see things normally in the daytime. So we will go out to a geographic area and have them conduct a surveillance to see if there are any enemy in that area. And then if there is enemy in that area we can evaluate that information by reviewing the tapes that are made of their imagery--infrared images--and we can actually then target things as well. We can either take them with the ship's weapons or we can have the AHIPs helicopters engage them with their weapons.

This therefore provides us with a means not only of going out and searching an area and verifying that there is an enemy in the area or possibly a friendly. But if in fact it is an enemy then we also have the ability to, at long range, engage an enemy which would be well beyond the range of our normal ships' weapons.

MAJ WRIGHT: It also basically, then, if I understand it correctly, extends your eyes well over the horizon?

CDR MORRAL: That's correct. Especially at nighttime with the equipment that they have available to them.

MAJ WRIGHT: Normally you would embark on your ship your organic two SH-60s and then you have the capability to use one of your two hangers to put two of the [AH]-58Ds on board as well?

CDR MORRAL: That is correct.

MAJ WRIGHT: Then normally in a deployment you would have the AHIPs aboard for a set period of time and then you would come back in and they would be rotated to another ship?

CDR MORRAL: Pre-hostilities the crews are being rotated on a monthly basis. Since hostilities have commenced they extended that and they didn't rotate them at the normal period.

These AHIPs helicopters are an in-theater asset, unlike my LAMPS. My LAMPS were embarked prior to departing from the States and they will be returned to the States with me. The AHIPs I did not get them on board until we reported in theater and we will disembark those prior to leaving the Gulf as well.

MAJ WRIGHT: Now normally you would operate with two frigates out at a time doing patrolling, and then have other assets further back down the Gulf to back you up?

CDR MORRAL: Well, that's not necessarily the case. Depending on the mission. The mission at the beginning of hostilities for the U.S.S. Nicholas was to get as far north as we possibly could and try to remain as undetected as possible so that we could stand by to relieve the pilots who were shot down. We ... our combat SAR [Search-and-Rescue] mission was our primary one at the beginning of hostilities. That's why we're so far forward from the rest of the ships.

From that forward position, then, if pilots went down and it was in reasonable range we could get out LAMPS helicopters out and pick them out of the water, which we did in early--late January. In late January we picked an F-16 U.S. Air Force pilot out of the water up off of Kuwait Bay.

MAJ WRIGHT: And you have also embarked on board then some SEALS [Navy special operations forces] to assist in that search and recovery?

CDR MORRAL: Again, the SEALS are only an in-theater asset. We didn't get them on board until we came in here. They're used in many capacities from mine destruction, to any kind of diving op[eration]s, to special warfare projects, to going along in the helicopters and jumping in the water and hooking harnesses on the downed pilots.

MAJ WRIGHT: The nature of the detachment that the 4th of the 17th Cavalry were put on board your ship is the two flight crews, two aircraft, and then a small maintenance and support element?

CDR MORRAL: That's correct. Pre-hostilities we had four pilots and I think about seven or eight crew members, maintenance-type guys. After hostilities began they've actually upped the number of pilots. We carry about seven or eight since hostilities to give us more flight time in the evening if we needed it.

MAJ WRIGHT: In terms of a FFG-7 Class ship you don't have a lot of excess space. How do you put these additional people and their equipment on board?

CDR MORRAL: That's correct. The ship normally is ... would man at the maximum about 220 people, and that's even with the LAMPS (two detachments) on board. We maxed out at one point at 270 people. So we had taken the lounge furniture out of our lounges and put cots and mattresses in their. We did that prior to deployment anticipating large numbers of additional people.

We've also gone actually, at this point--in some respects--to "hot-bunking" it. There's always some people on watch. With the normal work hours in combat if you get four to six hours of sleep a night you're lucky. Therefore one bunk could actually be used by four different people and they would never interfere with each other. Now, we're not going to that extreme. But certainly there is room to have one bunk be used by two different people.

For the Army guys, I might add, it sure beats sleeping over in and wiggling in the weeds and sleeping with the scorpions. So they're not complaining at all. They like it. They like having a cot and a mattress and a nice well air conditioned space. Good food. Having their laundry done every day or whenever they need it to be done. It's pretty good living, actually, compared to what some people are putting up with at this time of the war.

MAJ WRIGHT: And then having the normal practice of having LAMPS on board anyway, your crew is familiar with helicopter operations. So that transition was a fairly easy one for your guys?

CDR MORRAL: Absolutely. We are a fully qualified helicopter landing ship here. We work with the LAMPS all the time and we have rather sophisticated systems for landing them: the RAST System where we hook cable up to them in rough weather and pull them back to the deck. So having the Army small helicopters land on us is actually no problem to us. We were already ready to go. We've landed all kinds of helicopters on here: British Lynx helicopters, the Desert Ducks that come out. We've landed all kinds.

MAJ WRIGHT: The SH-3s?

CDR MORRAL: I believe they're SH-2s.

MAJ WRIGHT: SH-2s. What is your Home Port?

CDR MORRAL: Charleston, South Carolina.

MAJ WRIGHT: So did you have any chance to work with any AHIPs in the prep for the cruise?

CDR MORRAL: During the Middle Eastern Forces Exercise we conducted last July we did some work with a detachment of the AHIPs that came out and worked with us for about two days getting day and nighttime landing qualifications and other checkouts. So we, in fact, were ready to go on all respects once we got over here.

MAJ WRIGHT: When exactly did you deploy?

CDR MORRAL: September 21, [1990].

MAJ WRIGHT: And at that point you came over essentially to do the blockade mission?

CDR MORRAL: Primarily at that time it was interdiction, challenging merchant ships.

MAJ WRIGHT: So that then the AHIPs were used to go out and put eyes on the ships and validate the contacts that your radars picked up?

CDR MORRAL: That's correct. That plus other surveillance operations.

MAJ WRIGHT: As we get up to January 17, 1991, when the war breaks out, where exactly were you on that date, where was the ship on-station?

CDR MORRAL: Well, we had been ... we knew that at H-Hour when the war would begin that we were ... our position was to be as far north as possible, again, so that when we send the first jets in for bombing raids, if pilots were shot down we would be within close range to get out and pick them out of the water as quickly as possible.

Of course, on the Nicholas here, we weren't sure exactly when the war was going to start. We don't have Tomahawk Missiles so we weren't involved in the initial Tomahawk launches. So really we were kind of just waiting to see--just like everybody else--when it was going to start.

But I was ... I knew ... I felt in my own mind that it was imminent therefore I started trying to work the forces north. We were actually operating with three Kuwaiti Naval forces as well: the [FPB 57-class fast attack missile craft P-5702] Istiqlal and [TNC 45-class fast attack missile craft P-4505] Al Sanbouk, both fast patrol boats, and the landing ship Salwahil. So I was in company with them and we were trying to get up into the Dorra Oil Field area prior to hostilities. So in fact, that's where we were when hostilities started.

Now we went up there the first night and we were flying helicopters around the platforms at night and we took some Triple A [antiaircraft artillery fire] off them which was somewhat of a surprise since we didn't know there were any people on those platforms at the time. We informed our bosses and they directed us to withdraw to the south, to the east, until they could decide what was the best action to take with these platforms.

I asked at that time that we be allowed to go back up there with just my Nicholas and the Istiqlal, which was the most capable of the two fast patrol boats, and engage and eliminate the enemy forces on these platforms.

And the following day I was given permission to do that. So I left the Salwahil and the Al Sanbouk down in the Marjon Oil Fields, which are about 40 miles southeast of the Dorra Oil Platforms. Under the cover of darkness, then, the Nicholas and the Istiqlal in total EMCON, [emissions control], meaning that they had nothing radiating at all ...

MAJ WRIGHT: You shut everything down, shut all your emissions down?

CDR MORRAL: We shut everything down so they couldn't detect us. We proceeded back up there. Well, before we got up there we launched the helicopters. Everything was airborne by the time we got up to position to engage the platforms.

MAJ WRIGHT: Can you talk me through the [18 January 1991] engagement itself, sir?

CDR MORRAL: Basically the plan was to go up there, like I said, in total EMCON and get relatively close--within range of our weapons systems but hopefully outside anything he had. We weren't sure exactly what he had on the platform. We knew about the 23-millimeter [antiaircraft guns] and the SA-7 weapons which had a max[imum] range of about three or four miles. I can shoot my surface gun here at a much greater range.

MAJ WRIGHT: That's a 76-mm?

CDR MORRAL: A 76-mm. So I saw no reason to close in within his weapons since I could pound him with mine outside his--unless he had something we didn't know. And we weren't really sure what he had. We had surveilled these platforms the week before so we had some idea of what we thought was on them. And the idea was to launch the LAMPS--I always launch the LAMPS first because I have to get him off the deck to get the AHIPs out on to the deck. So I launched him out, and then I launched the LAMPS [i.e., AHIPs]. The plan was for the AHIPs to come from the left flank--looking at the platform from the left flank ...

MAJ WRIGHT: Which would be the landward side?

CDR MORRAL: That's correct. The northwest, landward side.

I didn't want to fly the AHIPs in between the platforms because I was afraid they'd get caught in crossfire so I decided to let him take the landward two platforms and to strike those. And then once they had ... the AHIPs had engaged them, then I was going to have them withdraw to a safe distance where I could then open up my surface-to-surface guns and also the Istiqlal, who also has a 76-mm and a 40-mm as well, could open up on the remaining platforms and then take it from there.

So the first volley was in fact from the AHIPs. It was a laser-guided HELLFIRE missiles. We launched three of them. All three of them were direct hits on the bunkers. And I have to say, in retrospect, the weapon of choice against a well-fortified sandbagged bunker--and these were very well fortified, they were several feet thick--is in fact the HELLFIRE missile. And I have videos that show that beyond any doubt--you have to see that.

So the idea was to really lay two of them ... we picked the two on the side that we thought were the most heavily fortified. We thought, perhaps, those were where the radios and the officers, if there were any, were going to be manning. In fact that was the case. We were a little concerned that if we gave them too much time they would have the ability to radio back to about 40 miles north where the enemy forces were and then we would be faced with an F-1 Mirage or an Exocet missile threat or some such thing. So the idea was to lay them as low as we could as early as we could and catch them before they could get to the radios. And I may add [that] we lucked out in that regard.

In fact, when we got the HF [high frequency] radio it was still dialed on off frequency. They didn't have it on the frequency we know them to use, which is an indication that they never had a chance to call in back home and let them know what was happening.

MAJ WRIGHT: So it is your assessment that your forces got into position completely undetected by the Iraqi defenders?

CDR MORRAL: That's correct. The first they knew was the first HELLFIRE that hit one of the platforms. And then ... that was ... we kind of hit them from the left flank, more or less the left and rear flank. I opened up from the front so they more or less saw the first couple of rounds were coming. They were being hit by something--I'm sure they didn't know what--from the northwest and now they're being hit from the southeast. So we caught them in between, so to speak.

And after we pounded them with the guns ... the AHIPs, since they didn't seem to be getting any resistance, actually came back. And I might add that the four pilots I had that night ... a normal flight op[eration]s for them is a one to two hour mission. They're flying totally night vision devices. I am sure that you, as an Army individual, are aware of the trickiness and the fatigue factor of doing that. We launched them three entire hops [missions] that night. They came back, reloaded, went out. Came back and reloaded a third time. I believe by the end of the third hop the guys had just about had it and I decided to pull them back a little early and not let them continue.

But at that point we were more or less just ... were no longer firing at anybody but we were using them surveillance to pick out hot spots which would indicate a body.

MAJ WRIGHT: Did you move in then at dawn to come in closer?

CDR MORRAL: No. We continued through the night. Once we stopped firing and felt there would be no more resistance and that probably they wanted ... that any survivors would want to surrender, we went in at nighttime. The Istiqlal went in first because she is a smaller control boat. She went on the first platform and picked up some survivors.

There were six guys that had set themselves free in a raft or a small boat off the first platform that got hit and we went over and picked them up. So the first prisoners of war that I had on this ship we took off the raft from one of the earlier platforms that had been hit. And none of them ... one of them was injured but the other five were not injured.

The Istiqlal at the first platform she picked people up to the south ... no, on the northeast. They, in fact, had some people injured. There were some KIAs [killed in action] in that group.

We were pretty much done with this by ... we were still there the next morning doing things. But we continued through the night, platform by platform, and very carefully went in and saw if there were any bodies or any movement. If there were we told them to come down to the lower platforms and stand there and get out from beneath the bunkers and those types of things.

I was very fortunate. I have two fluent Arabic speakers embarked on my crew. One of them runs my ship's store. He's a 3rd Class Petty Officer, a Navy resident alien of the United State who is a Kuwaiti national. His father is in Kuwait and his mother still live in Kuwait. He was born in Kuwait. Lived there until he was 18. Went to school in India and came to America and went to school for a while and married an American gal. Then he joined our Navy. But he's still not a ... he's a resident alien of the United States, but he's on board the ship. So he was my expert. In fact, when he asked the Iraqis if they wanted to surrender and put their hands up when they came on board they asked if he was Kuwaiti because they recognized his accent. He said "No, I'm American."

I also have a Jordanian, a dual citizen Jordanian-American citizen. A Fire Controlman on here who also speaks fluent English--excuse me, I should say Arabic, which is his native language--and he's a college graduate of the United States, of a college in the United States, who's joined our Navy.

So I have two Arabic speakers--and I used them throughout the evening. They asked the guys if they wanted to surrender and if they did then to put their hands up. They followed along.

All in all through the evening, then, we continued to surveille the platforms. In all their was 23 enemy prisoners of war that we took, and five KIA. I'd say that four or five of the prisoners had serious injuries, serious wounds. Two of them had grave ... three of them had grave wounds. I requested emergency medivac [medical evacuation] and got it.

I have a doctor embarked. He's a Reserve that was called up. He's normally an emergency trauma room expert in a hospital in New Orleans. He was doing that in New Orleans five weeks ago. They called him up. He was going to the [USNS] Comfort. They asked us do we want a doctor and I said absolutely. He came. And I credit him with saving at least two, if not three, human lives that night. Because without a doubt three of them would not have been alive the next morning had we not had him. In fact, I have heard that one of them, in fact, did die later on when he was taken to shore.

MAJ WRIGHT: What's the doctor's name, sir?

CDR MORRAL: Rob Culligan.

MAJ WRIGHT: And his rank?

CDR MORRAL: Lieutenant Commander.

MAJ WRIGHT: As you assess the operation after you have pulled back, [is there] anything that you would have done differently or did this pretty much go off the way you had anticipated it would with the AHIPs?

CDR MORRAL: I guess you can always sit back and think about how you would do it differently. But since I was able to take the first 23 enemy prisoners of war ... . I killed, of twenty-eight, I only had to kill five of them. They had heavy armament. If they wanted to, especially in daytime, they could have shot all of my helicopters out of the air. And I took absolutely no casualties. I was able to get--recover--their five bodies and return them some day to their families so at least they'll know what happened to their loved ones, unlike our experience in Vietnam.

I don't know what else we could have done better. I mean, we did everything. I took zero casualties. In the words of a dear patron saint, General George S. Patton, the idea is for you to survive and make the other illiterate, illegitimate chap die for his country. I have cleaned that up a little bit, because I don't think that's quite how the general said it. But I think that's what we did. We took no casualties. We didn't take any unnecessary chances.

Although if we had gone up there in the daytime and asked them if they wanted to surrender they could have shot everything out of the air. So I think there is something in between you have to do. We had to use some amount of force to protect our own forces. But I think when the time came to assess whether we needed to do any more, we stopped it at the right time and went in.

By and large they were all thankful and ready to surrender. I might add that there were a few of them among the group that were noticeably upset about being taken prisoner. Most of them were very happy. Others were upset. We found enough of the maroon berets on the platforms to know that there were, in fact, some Republican Guard individuals amongst them that were obviously sent there to discipline the others. There were some Special Forces guys, officers, Baath party guys. There was a spattering of them amongst them that were obviously there to keep the others in line. But the majority of them were Reservists that had been hastily called up and who really didn't want to be there in the first place and were only looking for an honorable way to surrender so they could get the hell off the platforms.

MAJ WRIGHT: You alluded to the heavy ordinance. Did it turn out to be, in fact, the 23-mm [Soviet-manufactured] ...

CDR MORRAL: Yes.

MAJ WRIGHT: ... ZPUs, or I guess ZSUs?

CDR MORRAL: You've lost me. But its the same 23-mm that you see ... its a standard Soviet battery. You have 23-mm and SA-7s or some sort of miscellaneous--

MAJ WRIGHT: Some sort of mix like that.

CDR MORRAL: They also had a lot of C-4 explosives. We're not sure why it was there. The only thing we could speculate, is that they put all the explosives there with the idea that as part of the tactic they'd blow these oil well heads off and create an oil spill as Saddam ...

MAJ WRIGHT: As he has subsequently done.

CDR MORRAL: Now these were inactive wells, but there were also scuba tanks there and I think they were thinking about going down and patching this to the active part of the well head and blowing these and creating an oil spill. But that's speculation ... but I don't know what else they would have used these for.

MAJ WRIGHT: As you look into the operation itself, you not only do it with a minimum loss of life but you also do it by using the precision attack mode with minimum collateral damage to the Kuwaiti assets?

CDR MORRAL: Well in this case these are inactive platforms which had been inactive for some time. There wasn't any value to the Kuwaitis. Apparently ... I was told later that these platforms were actually shot up during the Iranian-Iraqi wars so that's why they were inactive in the first place. There wasn't a whole lot there to be worried about. We didn't want to blow the heads off, though, and create an oil spill. I knew they were inactive from the war with Iran, so I wasn't too concerned. But there's still a chance if they had a problem.

MAJ WRIGHT: Subsequent to this operation ...

MAJ WRIGHT: As you assess that kind of oil rig operation--thinking back to the Iran-Iraq war, towards the closing phase of that when the tankers were coming under attack there was some more of that type of operation. There is a possibility if trouble flares again in this or similar types of environments where we've got offshore oil wells--is there tactically anything that you think you've learned from going through this operation that would be of relatively universal value?

CDR MORRAL: Not from the operation that I did. There were no oil spills. These were inactive heads so we really didn't have to worry.

When I sent my guys back in there ...

CDR MORRAL: ... when I went back in there I blew up ... I couldn't take all this armament back on the ships and I was leaving there to go back south to get the Salwahil to bring them back up to get on station for the CSAR [combat search-and-rescue] mission, so I had the SEALS go over, and the EOD [explosive ordnance demolition] guys, and they blew a lot of this stuff. So I just told them to be careful not to put too much on there or they would have blown the oil heads off. But we dumped a lot of the stuff into the water right off the platforms. The gun barrels, we just blew those so they couldn't reuse them. And we just made anything of the enemy's equipment there either unusable or just threw it into the water.

MAJ WRIGHT: Subsequent to this first engagement did you have further actions involving the AHIPs?

CDR MORRAL: Yes. A couple of nights later we caught four patrol boats, boghammer-type with guns on them. We sank those four as well.

MAJ WRIGHT: Can you explain briefly the tactic you used in doing that?

CDR MORRAL: Well, we were under surveillance. At this point we were pretty far up north. I was sending my LAMPS and AHIPs in pretty close to the beach, a couple miles off the coast, looking for any movement. And there are certain patterns to the boghammers. These guys are all right in a row and you can easily see the gun mounts. I had the guys actually take the tapes and come back and show me the tapes of them. I said "yeah, they look like it, they look like boghammers, and there's the gun mounts."

And then I asked ... I requested permission from my bosses to engage them. They said yes. So the guys went back out and they engaged them, and hit them with .50-caliber [machine guns] and flechettes [2.75" folding fin aerial rockets]. They did an adequate number on the boats. They saw two sink and the other two were badly damaged, so they wouldn't bother anybody.

MAJ WRIGHT: Again, that's a capability the AHIP gives you in terms of having the immediate access to the video imagery from their mast-mounted sights?

CDR MORRAL: That's right. Which is good for BDA, Battle Damage Assessment. Also for verifying that in fact what you said you sank, you sank. Because, as you know from reading the news and what not, that we've sank ... the patrol boats that they have in the Iraqi inventory, we've sank every one of them about five times over now. And they keep coming back. So I think either we're misidentifying ... in the heat of battle the aviators are misidentifying what they're actually shooting at. It is an enemy ship but it's not the one they're identifying, that class. Therefore the TNC 45s and [FPB] 57s keep showing up. I really don't think the Iraqi's have the ability to build a new one from scratch every day so I would assume that the Battle Damage Assessment is not accurate.

These videos, without a question of doubt, you evaluate it and you know what has been shot at. You know whether you hit it. You know whether it sank. It is a very good capability. It is not a trivial one. It's not just to sit there and wonder at what a great job you did. It does have some tactical value.

MAJ WRIGHT: You've also been involved in some of the mine counter measure missions. Can you briefly go over how you use the AHIPs for that?

CDR MORRAL: The AHIPs haven't really gotten too involved in that because the only way they would do it is if they go out there ... they may luck upon one and they might see it in their night vision devices. But they're kind of hard to see in the night vision. You've got to have some relative contrast of heat and cold for those to really pick things up. Although, they are out there looking and they can luck upon one ...

MAJ WRIGHT: It is more of a daylight mission?

CDR MORRAL: More a daylight mission. And at nighttime we have mast mount sights on the ship that we can possibly see them with. The AHIPs moving as fast as they are at nighttime, I doubt whether he could see a mine. They haven't seen any but I don't think they have much ability for mines.

MAJ WRIGHT: Sir, is there anything else that you can think of that I haven't thought to ask you about the employment of the AHIPs other than just a general statement about whether you'd like to have them back on board on a regular basis when you do missions like this?

CDR MORRAL: Yes. I'd like to have them on a regular basis. I think the combination of the FFG and the LAMPS and the AHIPs has been ... the value of that has been demonstrated here in the last couple of weeks.

The value of this ship, in the eyes of my seniors, goes up tremendously if I have the AHIPs on board because that gives me the nighttime surveillance, long range, over the horizon capability that without them we don't have. So this ship is a much more capable one with them. I wouldn't want to leave Bahrain without them. They've added a tremendous capability to this class of ship and I think you've seen it here on the Nicholas during the last couple of weeks.

MAJ WRIGHT: I definitely appreciate you taking the time, sir, and if there's anything ...

CDR MORRAL: I would also just like to commend LTC [Bruce E.] Simpson, the OIC [officer in charge, i.e., commanding officer of the 4th Squadron, 17th Cavalry]. The LAMPS brought him on board the night we took out the oil platforms. He has done a superb job here. We work as a team. These guys are treated, and they are, in fact, just like any other crew member. They consider themselves Nicholas crew members. I treat them that way. It has been great having them on board. But what I really want to commend the colonel for is that not once did he mention the fact that we lost the Army-Navy [football] game this year. [Laughter].

MAJ WRIGHT: Thank you very much, sir.